With increasing demand for more information to be supplied to homes and/or businesses, many network communication providers are upgrading, adding, and/or switching their networks to optical communications network(s). Optical communications networks typically offer high-speed voice, video, and data transmission between providers and homes as well as businesses. Conventional exemplary optical networks include fiber to the node/neighborhood (“FTTN”), fiber to the curb (“FTTC”), fiber to the building (“FTTB”), fiber to the home (“FTTH”), fiber to the premises (“FTTP”), or other edge location to which a fiber network extends.
To transmit optical signals from a source to a destination over a Passive Optical Network (“PON”), the optical signals typically travel through multiple passive optical components such as fiber cables, optical splitters and attenuators that make up the optical distribution network (“ODN”). In one example, PON and/or ODN may contain similar component and they can be described fiber network between an optical line terminal (“OLT”) and optical network terminals (“ONTs”). PON, in one aspect, may be considered as a type of ODN. PON has different versions with different capacities and speed. For example, a PON can be one of GPON (Gigabit PON), XGPON (10 Gigabit PON), EPON (Ethernet PON), GEPON (Gigabit Ethernet PON), and the like.
In PON networks, a centralized OLT is used to transmit signals via a passive fiber ODN to a multitude of ONTs. A benefit for using the PON is efficiency and cost effective because PON allows shared medium of ODN which can be amortized the costs across multiple ONTs. As such, the PON network is generally more efficient in resource consumption than an optical network using point-to-point individual links.
A drawback associated with a conventional ONT is that it is typically large in size and is not portable. Another drawback associated with conventional ONT is that it requires a dedicated power supply to support its power consumption.